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Nanotech Trojan Horse That Kills Cancer
An anonymous reader writes "University of Michigan scientists have created the nanotechnology equivalent of a Trojan horse to smuggle a powerful chemotherapeutic drug inside tumor cells - increasing the drug's cancer-killing activity and reducing its toxic side effects." From the article: "The drug delivery vehicle used by U-M scientists is a manmade polymer molecule called a dendrimer. Less than five nanometers in diameter, these dendrimers are small enough to slip through tiny openings in cell membranes. One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair."
Sure, this might make you feel uncomfortable, but guess what will make you feel even more uncomfortable? Having your body bombarded by potentially levels of radiation so high that it is potentially fatal.
There are so many ways to improve upon killing humans. Is one more way really worth worrying about? So someone has found a better way to diliver a chemical payload into a human cell. Certainly I bet someone can figure out how to make said payload lethal. Who cares though? We already have chemical and viruses sitting around that can kill within seconds. It is like worrying that some nation went from owning 5000 to 10,000 nuclear weapons, or worrying about getting shot 100 times rather then 50. If genocide is your goal, the tools are already avaliable.
I personally am excited at the prospect of a new treatments like the one outlined. Dead is dead. You can throw HF in my face or you can throw your nano-poisonin my face. Either way, the outcome is the same. On the other hand, nanomedicen is not chemo. Chemo has the potential to be almost as bad as the cancer. If a nanomedicen can kill cancer and do less harm to my body, I am all for it, paranoia be damned.